The prompt for this blog, like the prompt for some other blogs, came from Steve Mason, a well-educated and resourceful investigator in Arizona. He put on his LinkedIn the other day, that he opened his 1,500th case. Not only was it a good excuse to brag about his record, but he also used it as an opportunity to share lessons learned in going from one to one thousand and five hundred. It got me thinking that I don’t have a good case count of my own anymore. And I never need excuses for a few lessons of my own.

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A tendency lingers in OSINT to think it’s about finding the thrilling and the hidden, when the reality is, it’s about finding the obvious and the mundane. Master the basics by reading some journalism texts and go from there.

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As you grow as an OSINT professional, you need to become adept at four things: 1) know how to scope, and what you need to find, 2) know where to look, 3) know how to look, and 4) know how to make sense of what you find.

Have you made any resolutions to get better in these areas?  Please share.

 

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Did you notice that I promised to put up a blog post every week in 2024? As I already missed a week, I’m making up for it by posting twice this week.

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In my penultimate blog post of 2023, I pined for best years ever, noting 2023 wasn’t one of them for me. I will say that regardless of my personal travails, 2023 was a glorious year for open-source researchers, and 2024 could become our best year ever. Just look at how things used to be and how they are today.  Still, as good as we have it, I’ll also tell you that it used to be better.

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I put nine posts on my website in 2023. Really, eight posts and one post announcing an extended hiatus. I’ve re-capped the year’s post for you.

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I sat down at the start of 2023 convinced it would be the best year ever.I was wrapping up a huge month.  One with several days over 15 billable hours.  I was cranking out memorandum upon memorandum on companies and individuals at a frantic pace. While dealing with family issues, it made the output more notable.  I was on a roll. The forthcoming year was also a milestone birthday year. I had friends retired or retiring.  I had other plans.  I was convinced I could, would, build off of the late 2022 successes.  I was not ready to give in or give up, but rather triple down.  As I say, every day brushing my teeth, more cases, more clients, more known. As 2023 draws to a close, it was not the best year ever.

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The dominant form of teaching and presenting Open-Source Intelligence, “OSINT” is via tables/charts of lists.  If you need domain information, you go here, people stuff, go there.  30 years of practicing OSINT, I can tell you it seldom works that way.  I find my people information in lawsuit documents.  I find company ownership by reading the news. That UCC thing that shows up and you wonder what it means, I find it shows unknown relationships between companies. You have to know what you are looking for; have a good sense of what documents matter and have the ability to rampage through lots of records.  That’s how I think you should research.

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Everything you need to do OSINT is listed below. Just memorize these four steps, and you, too, can be an OSINT practitioner.

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You hear people talk about the smell test or sixth sense or “after so many searches, I just know.” The truth is, you don’t. You just get better at figuring out accuracy, authority, legitimacy.

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The spark for this post came via ace investigator and colleague of mine, Steven Mason. His post. He wrote about data hierarchy—go read it, there’s some really good points. What makes the post even more valuable was that it drew in some disagreement. A commentator wrote, “I respectfully disagree with your take on OSINT. Data and intelligence are not synonymous, nor are credibility, authenticity, and value.” My initial thought was this is gobbledygook. What is data. What is intelligence. It is an interesting and confounding rabbit-hole.

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After a long time on hiatus, I have something to write about. No, I’ve had a lot of things to write about, but some interesting things I found in a recent assignment really prompted me to get out the ol’ blogging tool again.

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This is a pause. A delay. as I attend to pressing matters. Writing here is a luxury, a luxury I cannot afford at present. Yet, I shall return. My hackles will be raised by some form of “OSINT” list. I will rant. I will rave. Just not for a while. I believe I have much to offer the public record researcher, the online searcher, the Internet maven. Soon. Thanks for reading in the past, and please stop often by to see when I’ve started back up.

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The Oscars this year don’t arrive until March, at which point we can say award season is finally over. It also means we have time to nominate ourselves for some special work last year. My research over the year was as basic as looking up names at the Cook County Circuit Court, Criminal Division to a deep dive that had us looking at items from the 1970s.  Look at the nominations and tell me who you think wins an award.

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I spent the last six weeks of 2022 primarily on a big case. Lots of people and companies to research. What d’ ya got was being asked of me over and over and over. And one of the biggest, really the biggest, gots we got; well, it did not come by accident, but we did kind of stumble into it.

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There will be a lot of posts from a lot of people in the coming weeks, months, years on FTX because schadenfreude and the Emperor’s New Clothes never lose their satisfaction. There will also be lessons to learn. One that’s already clear from FTX – think hard about who you want to research when setting your due diligence scope. Who you research will have a major impact on what you find. When the question comes, what d’ya got, the answer will be, it depends on who you searched.

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You’re only as good as your findings. I tell people this all the time. Return a set of searches with findings, from mundane criminal convictions to spectacular instances of mob activity, the client is thrilled. You did a good job. It bugs the heck out of me that researchers are rated this way. I retort, you go to your doctor for a check-up. She’s says all’s well, great numbers. Do you object? Question the work? It’s not my fault you wanted to do business with someone absurdly clean. Or were they?

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PACER is a one stop tool for court searches. You can find cases. Then, you can dig into the case records for more information. It can also be exasperating.

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To Google something these days amounts to no more than putting words in the search box. Maybe you put words in quotes. There was a time when it took more to search. It was not learning Cobalt, but you did need to know the little ins and outs of search. Still, knowing how to construct a proper search is not what makes a good researcher. You have to do your homework.

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Researchers have access to a humungous amount of materials via online databases. So many sources can produce so many articles. How do you get to the right articles. Do you do a negative news search? A negative news screen, however, may not always be the best way to find negative news. I have a few other ideas.

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